Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyerand its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter often called "The Great American Novel"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 November 1835
CountryUnited States of America
attitude past errors
If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error.
father good-father shows
Good fathers not only tell us how to live, they show us.
wells behave maximum
It must be well-nigh a maximum of sense to behave so that one escapes being hanged.
humble turkeys giving
Thanksgiving day. Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys.
tough-times tough teach
Tough times teach trust.
humans accounting human-beings
There is no accounting for human beings.
pessimist optimist wells
A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.
machines may pages
The machine has several virtues... One may lean back in his chair and work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around.
taken remains has-beens
Education is what remains when what is learned has been taken away.
over-you moments free-will
Start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale.
wealth satisfied
To be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth.
pride men islands
We had an abundance of mangoes, papaias and bananas here, but the pride of the islands, the most delicious fruit known to men, cherimoya, was not in season. It has a soft pulp, like a pawpaw, and is eaten with a spoon.
father thinking twenties
I used to think my father was an idiot, until I turned twenty-one... Then I thought he was a genus.
disappointment father believe
I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey. I believe that whenever a human being, of even the highest intelligence and culture, delivers an opinion upon a matter apart from his particular and especial line of interest, training and experience, it will always be an opinion of so foolish and so valueless a sort that it can be depended upon to suggest to our Heavenly Father that the human being is another disappointment and that he is no considerable improvement upon the monkey.